LEGENDS OF ARCHAEOLOGY SAVING THE SERPENT

LEGENDS OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Saving the Serpent

The remarkable Frederick W. Putnam dedicated himself to excavating and preserving Serpent Mound.

BY BRADLEY T. LEPPER

In September of 1883, Frederick Ward

Putnam, curator of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, had his first opportunity to visit the storied mounds of Ohio. Accompanied by four fellow archaeologists, the team traveled by train to Hillsboro, where they hired a large mule wagon and set out over the rolling hills of southern Ohio. They arrived at the foot of a peninsula of jagged bedrock thrown up by some still unknown convulsion of the earth. They climbed down from the wagon and scrambled up the steep, rocky slope to find what is arguably the most remarkable of the thousands of Ohio’s ancient mounds: the great Serpent. As Putnam recalled the event years later:

“The most singular sensation of awe and admiration overwhelmed me at this sudden realization of my long cherished ambition, for here before me was the mysterious work of an unknown people, whose seemingly most sacred place we had invaded.”

As the sun set on the gigantic coils of this monumental serpent, its mystery and grandeur possessed Putnam. He then and there dedicated

himself to solving the puzzle of its origin and purpose: “The unknown must become known!”

Putnam was an exceptional man. Many scholars considered him to be the father of American archaeology. Such designations, which have gone out of fashion, often engender unresolvable debate about who really deserves the honorific. However, the historian Terry Barnhart recently observed that Putnam’s achievements “defined the emergence of American anthropology as an organized scientific discipline” and that his presence “is found in virtually all aspects of academic and museum anthropology in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Putnam was a prodigy. He became a curator of ornithology at the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, at the age of 17. After working at various museums between 1856 and 1873, he became the curator of the Peabody Museum in 1875. He served in this capacity until 1909 when, at the age of 70, he accepted the position of honorary curator. He was appointed Peabody Professor of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard in 1887. Putnam also served as the director of the anthropological section of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The collections Putnam assembled for this exhibit became the nucleus of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. He was also, at various times, the curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History and professor of anthropology and director of the anthropological museum at the University of California.

Although Putnam never wrote a major book and is sometimes criticized for making no substantive advances in archaeological theory, he did publish more than 400 articles in scientific journals and popular magazines. Though he was accused of being theoretically naive, he advocated careful and complete recovery of artifacts as well as what we now call “ecofacts,” such as “seeds, nuts, corn-cobs, and bones of animals, and one and all shall show their association and tell their story as a whole.”

Moreover, while his contemporaries excavated mounds for the rich troves of exotic grave goods, Putnam also searched the ground around the mounds for the humbler evidence of habitation, believing that no view of ancient cultures could be complete without reference to all these data. This approach enabled Putnam to discern, more clearly than anyone else, that “the ancient Americans were not the homogenous people generally supposed.”

Putnam returned to the Serpent Mound in 1885 and was horrified to see that “its destruction was inevitable unless immediate measures were taken for its preservation.” Alice Fletcher, a close friend and colleague, discussed the threat to this ancient monument with “a few Boston ladies.” These women, aided by the noted historian Francis Parkman, raised funds sufficient to purchase the site, conduct excavations, restore the mound to its former glory, and provide the basic amenities for a public park, making

A well-dressed Putnam at Foster's Earthwork, a structure made of clay and rocks in southern Ohio.

Serpent Mound the first privately funded archaeological preserve in the nation.

In recognition of this action, and to encourage similar efforts, Ohio’s legislature passed an act exempting from taxation all lands containing prehistoric earthworks that were purchased for preservation. The act also made it a crime to vandalize such archaeological parks. This was the first legislative act in the country for the preservation of archaeological sites and Putnam was overjoyed. He regarded the preservation of Serpent Mound as the most important achievement of his career. In a letter to his wife dated May 30, 1887, he wrote:

“It is a splendid thing darling—this preservation of this wonderful old monument and I feel it to be the grandest act of my life that I have been instrumental in bringing it about. I am so elated over it.”

Putnam meticulously excavated portions of Serpent Mound and other sites in the region. Observing him working at a mound across the valley from the Serpent, an anonymous participant in these excavations described Putnam as “a marvel of thoroughness.” She noted that “every trace of human occupation, or remains, which they found was carefully examined, labeled, and packed by the unwearied professor, who stood, note book in hand and umbrella over his head, like patience on a monument carefully watching the work going on around him and ... making a note of it all.”

Putnam’s careful investigations in the vicinity of Serpent Mound revealed a complicated record of successive occupations from burial mounds built by the Adena culture (circa 800 B.C.–A.D. 100) to an extensive village of the much later Fort Ancient culture (circa A.D. 1000–1550). This village consisted of “ash beds, the many implements in various stages of manufacture, the many thousand chips of flint ... and the many potsherds and other objects scattered throughout the dark soil.”

The Serpent itself contained no artifacts or burials. It was simply a grand earthen sculpture built from stones and clay. With no artifacts for comparison, neither Putnam nor subsequent archaeologists had any way to determine which culture—the Adena, the Fort Ancient, or some other group not represented in the remains uncovered by Putnam’s crews—crafted this serpentine geoglyph. Traditionally, most archaeologists have regarded the Serpent as contemporary with the Adena burial mounds. However, in 1991, a team of archaeologists returned to the Serpent to reopen one of Putnam’s trenches and recover samples. The team found bits of charcoal from intact portions of the mound and radiocarbon dating of these fragments of burned wood indicated that the Fort Ancient villagers were the likely builders.

After completing his systematic examination of the site, Putnam lovingly restored the Serpent to his best approximation of its original condition. During the restoration of the mound, the anonymous author of an unpublished manuscript titled “Our Camp Life at the Serpent Mound, July and August 1889,” noted that “Prof. Putnam would not trust the work of repair to any one but himself and he worked from early morning till dusk for many long days, trowel in hand, tracing the outline of the embankment. ”

Thanks to Putnam, Serpent Mound remains an impressive testimonial to a rich and vibrant culture. In Putnam’s words, “the old shrine ... is again held sacred; not for ancient and awful rites, but for the study of future generations.” Serpent Mound is now owned and operated by the Ohio Historical Society. At Putnam’s behest, the Peabody Museum transferred the property to the care of this organization in 1900.

A diagram of Serpent Mound by Squier and Davis.

BRADLEY T. LEPPER is a curator of archaeology with the Ohio Historical Society.